The group at Solebury School is going to create examples of learning and communicating practices that take our students beyond the immediate classroom and allow them to share with us, with each other, and with the global community. We are creating these examples to show our colleagues what we have learned while exploring some of the Web 2.0 tools, and how these types of tools might change how we educate. We are not going to teach the tools, rather share our excitement about what these new tools allow. We are interested in shifting the culture to think about how to help our students follow their passions and be part of a global learning community. We hope to show how these goals are now possible through the projects we create for our classes. We will make our class projects accessible via the web through a wiki or some other sharing portal.
Individual Portions of the Project:
Hanna
I am going to have my Computer 1 class create online "information pods" about current events to be shared with Kristy's 7th grade Current Events class. My goal is for my students to use 2.0 technologies to share information about current events and encourage the students in Kristy's class to look deeper at the issues. I am going to create a wiki to host whatever my students create, and then share that wiki with Kristy's class. I'm introducing the project today so I'll let you know how it goes.
We have begun a wiki for the Diversity programming at Solebury School, of which we are co-coordinators. This is a multifaceted program, with many teachers and students involved. One of our challenges over the past two yeas has been to gather the faculty diversity committee together because our schedules are packed, and just finding a common window of free time is next to impossible. The diversity committee's goals is to share ideas and put our heads together around issues that surface around campus and to brainstorm ideas in order to enhance the campus atmosphere and provide relevant and thoughtful clubs and programming. Just this spring, we set up the wiki, in the hopes that we could get the other faculty from the committee signed up and starting to use the Wiki to post news from their area. By the end of this year, we will be inviting the student diversity leaders to join the wiki as well. We hope to use the site for planning meetings for the different clubs that fall under the umbrella of diversity. These include: Diversity Club, Spectrum (GSA), Black Friday, Hispanic Affinity Group, Gender and Society, Adopted Students Group, and Inter-Cultural Student Association. In addition to simply planning the wiki could eventually allow for the clubs to advertise their meetings, encourage other students to attend, and continue discussions that have over-run the meeting time slot.
With these goals in mind we set up the wiki homepage with a Google calendar widget in which the club meeting times are listed, and the club faculty can edit to make public other relevant dates and times. We set up separate pages for each of the clubs to provide for description, discussion, and planning. We also included a page of RSS feeds from different relevant blogs related to the issues of diversity.
Goals - My goals for this project were to create a space in my regular curriculum for fostering student-driven, cross-disciplinary learning with real world application while giving students opportunities to use and learn about twenty-first century tools and technology. I hope that the projects and assignments I create will serve as a model and inspiration for other teachers interested in similar platforms.
Project - I co-teach and American Studies course at Solebury School, which is a combination Honors English and AP History course. We have developed an American Studies ning with the goal of enabling more cross-curriculum communication while allowing students to practice exploring twenty-first century tools. The American Studies ning is also intended to break down the walls of the classroom by creating a community of learners that extend beyond the students in the class in a given year by including American Studies alumni. In addition, the ning provides a platform for students to publish material online, and we give assignments requiring publication in the blog section. Most recently, during a unit about American autobiography, students wrote their own 5-6 page autobiographies which they were ask to post on the web. They were then able to read, share and comment on their peers' work in a meaningful way. We are also able to offer online review sessions and communicate in real time with students in other ways outside the classroom. Students are excited and engaged in this virtual community. Using the ning has also provided an excellent platform for discussion of online, academic etiquette. Every moment spent on the ning is a moment not only for students to be engaged in standard academic learning, but they are also learning the social skills of twenty-first century technology.
Problem: Time and space limitations have reduced communication between faculty members. This has created an environment where many faculty members feel out of the loop on school issues and it also has limited the amount of sharing between colleagues. In addition, the boarding aspect of our school requires a great deal of coordination between faculty members in terms of keeping track of dorm infractions, student issues, study hall assignment, staff comments (regarding duty) and planning of weekend events. % years ago this was accomplished using a large binder. A change was made to a less cumbersome automated "E-OD" book which is essentially an Excel sheet that has been tweaked for dorm use. The use of email to disseminate information has been helpful, but given the availability of new web tools, communication and planning could be improved. This would allow faculty members to use their time more efficiently and effectively.
Solution: Development of a Faculty Ning site for improved communication between faculty members and a Faculty wiki site to replace the limiting and now antiquated "E-OD" book.
Side Projects (Curriculum Based)
Use of Voicethread for Lesson Production (Pre-Algebra)
Development of a student wiki site (SoleburyScience) for coordination of science projects, schedule and assignments
This has actually become a department-wide site that has 143 members and is accessed daily by students in 7-8 classes and about a dozen faculty members.
Development of PLN for Passion-based Science Project (7th Grade Environmental Science)
Our Expectations
Coordinating our schedules is going to be difficult.
We need to support one another so this is a positive experience.
Steve should make us desserts!
Time will limit our progress.
It will be difficult to sell technology-based learning to our faculty.
We will have to spend a lot of time on our own getting to know these technologies.
Finding common goals will be relatively easy with this group (the teachers involved with PLP).
We are going to be introducing some radical change to our school.
We expect a gap between our work and meaningful school-wide use.
We need to make this a meaningful tool for learning relevant material.
Technology cannot overshadow content.
Hanna Elliot (Leader, Librarian)
Jon Freer (Math and Science)
Sarah Sargent (English)
Steve Benoit (Head of Foreigh Language, Head of Student Advising, French)
Kristy Thurrell (History and Social Studies)
OurProject:
Project Description:
The group at Solebury School is going to create examples of learning and communicating practices that take our students beyond the immediate classroom and allow them to share with us, with each other, and with the global community. We are creating these examples to show our colleagues what we have learned while exploring some of the Web 2.0 tools, and how these types of tools might change how we educate. We are not going to teach the tools, rather share our excitement about what these new tools allow. We are interested in shifting the culture to think about how to help our students follow their passions and be part of a global learning community. We hope to show how these goals are now possible through the projects we create for our classes. We will make our class projects accessible via the web through a wiki or some other sharing portal.Individual Portions of the Project:
Side Projects (Curriculum Based)
Our Expectations
Coordinating our schedules is going to be difficult.
We need to support one another so this is a positive experience.
Steve should make us desserts!
Time will limit our progress.
It will be difficult to sell technology-based learning to our faculty.
We will have to spend a lot of time on our own getting to know these technologies.
Finding common goals will be relatively easy with this group (the teachers involved with PLP).
We are going to be introducing some radical change to our school.
We expect a gap between our work and meaningful school-wide use.
We need to make this a meaningful tool for learning relevant material.
Technology cannot overshadow content.
Resources